Black labelled 10.09.2014

Yesterday was by far my worst day in 2014.
I thought about it and made a sequence of "misfortunes" I encountered on this one day alone.

First, early in the morning, I woke up with NO INTERNET ACCESS. Well, this itself had actually nothing bad in it, if the other "events" didn't turn up. Eventually it turned out to be just the telecommunication fuse deactivated itself (according to my house mate, Leon, who switched it back). And so I baked a cake, as I already planned the day before. Went to JunXiang's place at about 12:00, needed his help for passport photos.

Now this is where the exciting part begins. Sitting on the bus, on the way back from JunXiang's place, I got a call from Uncle Jeremy asking whether or not I'm stuck in the airport. FYI, I booked a flight to London on the 10th, arrival supposedly before 11am. Up until that moment I thought my flight would be on the 11th and not the 10th... I FORGOT MY FLIGHT!

So, the first thing when I got back home, I checked my booking confirmation mail, and I was like 哭笑不得.. Three things I immediately did, first calling Easyjet to re-confirm my return flight and to claim back the airport tax (ticket non-refundable), second booking a new flight on the same day with departure at 5:30pm under Germanwings, third calling Uncle Jeremy to update him so that he could pick me up later. 10x.xx EURO GONE, just like that.
Alle durcheinander...

I left home within thirty minutes, grabbed some burgers from McD in the train station and then traveled directly to Cologne-Bonn Airport. Arrived at airport at around 3:15pm, plenty of time left I thought to myself. Then I went directly to the check-in counter with my passport, only to find out that my name is not in the system. Being asked for the booking confirmation, I took out my phone and opened the mail from Germanwings airline. And guess what, I was in the WRONG AIRPORT -.- To explain this, I remembered very clearly that I entered "CGN" which I booked my flight, which stands for Cologne-Bonn-Airport, and there my actual departure was at Duesseldorf airport instead. What happened, or what have I done wrong, I didn't know.

Never mind that already, I asked the check-in officer what options do I have, at 3:30pm, two hours from actual departure time and in a different airport. Train would be difficult, so I 忍痛 TOOK A TAXI FROM AIRPORT TO AIRPORT. At first I planned to take the taxi just to another train station which is convenient for me, but that stupid traffic jam made me changed my mind. After a bit negotiation with the taxi driver, we agreed on a price of 100 EURO, without metering (so that he doesn't have to pay the 19% tax).

This time I made sure everything was done with adequate time to spare, and I made it to the waiting hall at around 4:50pm. Boarding supposed to be at 5pm, but nothing happened. At 5:20pm, announcement was made about my FLIGHT BEING DELAYD FOR TWO HOURS, until 7:20pm. Seriously wtf already, can things get any worse than that? Had I know that the flight was going to be delayed, I might as well saved that 100 Euro for taxi. Seriously 他妈的!

But wait, I wasn't in London yet. My flight arrived on time (with the two hours add-on), but I queued for passport control for more than an hour. ONLY TWO OFFICERS AT PASSPORT CONTROL, for all non-EU passengers. I got another call from Uncle Jeremy, who by then was really worried about me being stuck somewhere. And by the time I got my passport stamped and went to the luggage claim area, my luggage was very "lonely" with just two other partners on the whole belt. And the belt has already been used for four flights with mine being the first! Couldn't count anymore how many times I swore on this day up to that moment.

At the end I had my dinner only at 10pm local time, or 11pm on my watch. I was so hungry.

哎，心痛如刀割。
Today I rested the whole day, doing nothing significant.

Summer

Recently very pessimistic. I think out of the eight papers I am going to pass only four. One already failed, one I am pretty sure I will fail, another one 50-50, and one more I'm going to take it in a week time, so far not even 50-50.

Hopefully things will be better after this.
From October onwards I will be doing my industrial training, got a contract under Westnetz GmbH for five months. It is about developing a tool to evaluate the measurements for high voltage circuit breakers' acoustic partial discharge. Sounds complicated, isn't it? To simplify, I will get some data in .dat format. All I need to do is convert it to simple .csv ones, then load those data into Excel, and compare with samples from the company's engineers. The hard part is, my supervisor told me to try to make the programme with Excel, but data reading should be done with HTML or PHP, which means reading through websites. And I have no idea about PHP or HTML, not at all!

Well, that for October, a month to go from now. Leave the work aside, I booked a trip to London for the period 11th to 23rd September. Last paper on the 8th, and my passport has exactly six months validity on the 23rd, otherwise I would love to stay in London a bit longer. Found myself an apartment in Duisburg already, so I have nothing to bother in that period. Finally exams are coming to an end, finally huh.

Still lack of some motivation to work hard. I need a break, and I need a change.

劫难重重

Exams halfway, one next Tuesday, another one the next Thursday after that, and another one the next Monday after that.

Life is hard. Hard when you fail a paper two times in a row. Harder when you fail more than a paper two times in a row. And harder still, when you can't move on without these two. Such a sweet coincidence.

Had a paper this morning. Everytime I finish a paper, I would have no motivation to start anything purposeful or meaningful on that day. I went to buy some groceries after having lunch in the Uni cafeteria, then came back and played some game, read some novel, and then it's 9pm already.

Tomorrow is a new day. Life goes on.

Exams

The next two months would be the most difficult period for my master. In total eight exams, starting from next Tuesday 22nd July until the 10th of September.

Most difficult, yes, because once I pass all these eight papers, my master certificate would be just like following a fixed schedule. But so far I see no end, deadline is being dragged.

I'm not well prepared yet. This is not like me, usually I know more about the stuffs before going for an exam. But now, take this paper for next Tuesday for example, I haven't really looked at any of the exercise questions. Even though there were just five sessions throughout the whole semester, still I should have gone through them carefully and thoroughly by now.

But how? There are just so many distractions here, at the moment. Or to be precise, I tend to distract myself with other things, like trying to escape the fact that I should concentrate on revisions. What can I do?

Can I really sit and concentrate for the next two months? I don't believe that.
And can I sit still and concentrate for the next two days? I hope I can, otherwise I won't be able to perform well next Tuesday.

Even though the scores don't really matter to me now, due to my bad performance last semester, which had a rather bad impact on the overall average score, I do still hope that I do well this time.

Conclusion for the night. Motivation needed.

The Waiting

While waiting for a simulation's result, I added a live tracker to my blog, and was thinking that it has been too long since I last wrote anything..
Yes, it has been so long, typing fast seems fun, but I needed a lot of "backspace" now.

Maybe I should find a time again after my exam, to delete some old stupid posts and to re-design this blog a little bit, haha.

Exams... Exams.. Exams.. Big sigh.

Alright then, until the next time, take good care everyone.

Winter Holiday

3rd of February's flight, reaching KLIA late noon on the 4th.. until 3rd of March.

Give me another week and I'll be home.. HOME ~~!!!

Background Pictures..

Upgrade a few pictures here.. in case I want to change to any of them anytime..

to be continue..